THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I followed the link, quickly read the post and misread the poll so badly that I voted “yes” (to the question “should the BBWAA use secret ballots?” when I was sure from the context of the article that poll would be phrased in the form of the question “should the BBWAA make public HoF voting mandatory?").  What a dolt.

I strongly favor making voting public.  But I think more reforms than just that are needed:

* There should be a re-vamped screening committee who will not place the likes of Tony Womack (with all due respect to Tony Womack, who had a fine career but has no place in a HoF discussion) on the ballot.  With a little more credibility attached to who gets ON the ballot, it may be easier to push voters to vote for more candidates.

* Related to this first point, if there is a ceiling of 10 votes (which seems silly in light of the requirement of 75% concurrence), then there ought to also be a floor.  I’d suggest five.  If a voter turns in a ballot with less than whatever this floor requirement ends up being, it won’t count.  This is slightly less radical than the “elect-2” idea Tango has bandied about a bit (which I like), and for that reason I think it may have a better chance of happening.

* Eligibility for voting should be changed.  I’d make a voter eligible after having his BBWAA badge for five years, and would only allow a voter to keep his or her eligibility while actively covering baseball, and perhaps for some short period of time afterwards (no more than five years).  What “actively covering baseball” means could (and should) be more loosely defined than being a team beat writer, but the general idea is to disenfranchise those voters who are no longer paying any attention to the sport.

* I would like to see more participation, and participation that COUNTS, from the sabermetric community.  I don’t mean we should have fan voting, or even that every baseball blogger should have a vote, but that some mechanism be established for recognizing the best baseball minds who are actively putting their work and opinion out for public consumption and allowing them a vote.  The BBWAA is beginning to embrace this, but far too slowly and not enough are getting the recognition (and franchise) they deserve.

* The voters have bitched and moaned enough about the lack of guidance from the HoF that I think the Hall ought to give them something.  Not the steroid era instruction book they want, but some guidance on how the Hall itself sees the Hall.  I believe the Hall is first and foremost a historical museum, and the instructions should emphasize that a voter should vote with an eye toward having the inductees reflect the history of baseball as it was played in various eras.  That ought to be enough for them to figure out how to handle PEDs, DHs, closers, positional distribution, etc.

Or just tear the whole thing down and start over without the writers.  Enfranchising them, and them alone, was always a questionable decision from the point of view of journalistic ethics, and any practical justification that was true in the 1930s (these are the only guys who see enough of the games/players to do an objective job) has long since stopped being true.

The HOF recognizes that the free publicity from the news creators-reporters is ubiquitous.

The BBWAA *must* be part of the process.

The 10 years before voting ties in with the 5 year delay before voting starts.  If you give voting priveleges after 5 years, you allow the possibility of a voter not having been an active member of the baseball journalistic community during any of the player’s active career. 

Of course, one may think that’s perfectly fine…

#3/Greg: Good point - I should have thought of that.  Of course, I don’t think that matters nearly as much today as it did at the time the rule was formulated.

#2/Tango: I agree, it is inevitable that the writers will continue to be some part of the process.  I’d just like to see the part played by writers who don’t cover or even seem to care much about baseball eliminated, or diluted. 

With the newspaper business dying a slow death, how much of a distinction remains (or will remain, in the not-too-distant future) between the best of the baseball blogosphere, and the BBWAA?  Not much, IMO....

Except, of course, that the baseball blogosphere is generally SMARTER and more considered in their analysis than the vast majority of the BBWAA....

@1 I did the same thing.  The article definitely leans you in the direction of wanting to say “yes, of course the ballots should be made public” but the question states the opposite.

I don’t think the Hall sees its problems in the same way as we do, and won’t until people stop being elected.  Fortunately for them, there was so much Hall of Fame talent in the 90s, many of whom appear to have not used any PEDs that they will be able to postpone dealing with this issue for a couple of years.  The fact that many writers have no rational logic should also help to keep a wide variety of players with more than 5% on the ballot.  In two years we’ll know if that last part is true.

From reading comments on BB-ref, SBnation, Poz’s blog, etc. it seems that much of the general public agrees with the writers and their voting patterns.  A Hall that might embrace Lou Whitaker and not Don Mattingly makes no sense to the vast majority of fans.  Even if they Hall of Fame’s brass knows better (and I doubt that they do) it probably makes financial sense for them to keep the status quo.